Framebuffer configuration

The errors you're getting aren't related to KDE, at least not directly. What you're seeing is XFree86 searching through the system hardware to find a device conforming to the VGA standard--not something likely to happen in an old SparcStation! You'll want to tell it to search using a different driver.

First, you'll need to select the appropriate driver for your card. The full list can be found at http://www.xfree86.org/4.0.3/manindex4.html but be aware that not everything is built for the SPARC platform. You can get a list of what Splack comes with by issuing 'ls /usr/X11/lib/modules/drivers/' at a prompt. For now, we're only interested in the sun___ driver series. According to the XFree86 website, your GX and TGX both use the suncg6 driver. If you've got others, you'll have to do a little hunting to find out the model (try the 'prtconf' command if you've installed the sparcutils package).

Next, you'll need to edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config file. I recommend changing the settings by hand since most auto-configuration tools tend to be x86-centric. It's not too big of a deal since the file is plaintext and will have comments describing all the low-level stuff X needs to work. Don't worry about tweaking settings right now, you can take care of that when we get up and running. For now, most (but not all!) of the defaults are sane.

Search for the "Graphics Device" section. In most example configurations it should be near the bottom. You'll be replacing

     Driver    "vga"

     Driver    "suncg6"

While you're working on the file, now's also a good chance to fix the keyboard and mouse sections. Head up to the top half of the file to find them. If your mouse is anything like mine, you'll want to change the following to lines from

     Option "Protocol"     "PS/2"
     Option "Device"       "/dev/mouse"

     Option "Protocol"     "busmouse"
     Option "Device"       "/dev/sunmouse"

     Section "InputDevice"
        Driver      "keyboard"
        Identifier  "Keyboard1"
        Option      "Protocol"   "standard"
        Option      "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
        Option      "XkbRules"   "sun"
        Option      "XkbModel"   "type5"
     EndSection

That should get you started in the right direction. Let us hear how things turn out!

--Jason